Last Sunday on the third session of the portrait photography class Martin Szipal, our instructor was wearing a grey suit. He said that it was not for us, but for his friends who invited him for a Sunday lunch in some fancy restaurant.

We started with available light shooting on the balcony of the studio. The Sun was hitting the scene from behind the model and only those white boards were used as reflectors. The model’s hair was wonderfully bathed in light while her face was also lit properly. Martin explained that when the Sun is right above the model some artificial shade is to be constructed above her to avoid deep shadows in her eyes and under her nose and chin.

Martin mentioned Richard Avedon again. He said “Avedon was regarded the best photographer of the world. There was him and only the Almighty God above him.”

“The eye and the light reflected in the eye is the most important. When something is in golden ratio that’s good. When the eye is in golden ratio, that’s the best.”

“When one of the model’s eyes is looking into my eyes while the other is staring my ear, that is the the sign of distress. Distress might contract some muscles, for example muscles in the eye. You have to ask her to shut her eyes and open them again a few times to release those muscles in the eye.”

“You are directing your model with your mouth and hands. If you are hand holding your camera you cannot direct with your hands. You can do only half of the work. This is why I use the tripod and the life view of my camera.”

“They asked me once whether I can shoot stars too. And that’s a valid questions because actors are all crazy. They are nervous and worried, because they want to get that role in the movie or play.”

“You know my father was a photographer. I hated when he was telling me what had to be done and how. He was shouting with the retoucher when she had screwed up something. And I was in love with the retoucher girl, she was the one I was interested in at that time. My father could not keep quiet even in the cinema. He said for example: ‘A staircase should not be lit that way’ or ‘Look how that actor is lit. The shadow of his nose is in his mouth.‘, and people around us just wanted him to stop talking during the movie. And because I hated what my father was talking about so much, I do remember every words of his. And I agree with his words today.”

“Every photographer who is happen to be photographing clothes must have safety-pins, clothes-pegs and duct tape with him all the time.”

Martin showed us quite a few of his photographs again. On one of them there was a girl seemingly on coast with the wind blowing her hair to her face from behind. Martin said: “It was shot in a studio with a poster as a background and I glued her hair onto her face with my spittly fingers.”

At a moment Martin told to our model: “You don’t care if it’s (the pose) uncomfortable, it won’t be seen on the photo. It won’t be seen even if it hurts. ” The model was escorted by her mother to whom I told, that if the girl survives, it’s going to turn out the best model class for her, because Martin is so damn good. And the mother said: “Yes, but she is so young for this. She’s only 14.” I was wondering what a mother had thought about being a photo model.

During the session I realized two important technical limitations of lighting with strobes.

The first one was that available light – which by the way should be kept at minimum when shooting this way – and modeling light of studio strobes might not be enough for the convenient auto-focus of today’s digital cameras. The best possible workaround for this is using manual focus trusting your eyes.

The second one was that strobe power can sometimes be too much. Assistants brought in a 1000Ws strobe. The lighting was set up and after measuring the light at the minimum output power of the strobe it turned out that an aperture of F8 should have been used (at ISO 100) instead of the desired F2.8 which would have much better for the type of portraiture we were studying. A solution could have been increasing the distance between the light source and the model, but in that case the apparent light size would have suffered (smaller apparent light -> harsher (more spot-lightish) light). So, the strobe was just replaced by a 500Ws one.

At a point we were requested to practice the lighting techniques we’ve just seen. I tried to set up one of the edge lit scenes Martin created that day. I thought it would be easy. It was not that easy at all. With some help from other participants finally we managed to do something. It was a one light set up again. The model was lit almost from the front just a bit further away from the camera hitting mainly her right profile. Her left face was filled by light reflected by the white boards: one camera right and an other camera left. I directed her standing in front of her and then from the camera too. It was really just a few millimeters that I asked her to move her head to have her profile properly.

Then the task was to create a composition. Someone came with idea of a table and a laptop and my old idea with a blue colored speedlight came into my mind. Apart from lighting the whole scene we put my SB-800 onto the keyboard with a blue gel on it and set the power at 1/32. (We started experimenting from 1/128 and found 1/32 satisfactory.) We tried it with light backround too. I was a bit taken away by the technology and did not care too much with the model. I think the idea was good but it would have required more efforts and maybe a snoot or grid on the speedlight to control the blue light and letting it fall only to the model’s face.
Martin did not like it at all. He said it has nothing to do with contemporary photography. It’s not simple, there are too many colors and light sources in it.

I noticed my mindset changing gradually. I feel myself getting more and more conscious when taking pictures. Not shooting a lot and hoping that a few pictures would come out well but planning, setting up the scene and gear, and of course instructing my model.

Related articles:
Portrait Photography Class – Session #1
Portrait Photography Class – Session #2
Portrait Photography Class – Session #4
Portrait Photography Class – Session #5
Portrait Photography Class – Session #6
Portrait Photography Class – Session #7
Portrait Photography Class – Session #8